Thanks, but no thanks!

As readers here at The Sanctuary know, I don't give advice.
I ask questions.
If pushed to a wall, I give suggestions :-)

Caelaeno asked me how to politely turn down a guy, here.

I gave a suggestion.
She was gracious enough to reply that she found it helpful.
Which is nice, Caelaeno. Thank you.
But I can't help but feel that there are others here far better qualified to answer this question than I.

My review of 'Firelight'  (thanks again Danny!) yielded two examples of rejection on the romantic front.

What's so brilliant about this is that we get a woman rejecting a man (Elisabeth rejecting Mr. Taylor) and a man rejecting a woman (Charles rejecting Connie).

I thought to myself:
Why don't we look at this again?

And this time with both genders in mind, as rejectors and the rejected.


I have harped on enough in the past that it is entirely expected that a woman rejects several men before she picks one (for life hopefully).

I always thought that there must be far more women rejecting men than men rejecting women.

I think this is intrinsically true, but there is a shift in proceedings, of course, with the result that we now have a situation where for probably the first time in history, masses of women are deemed rejectable.
This is sad in many ways.
It used to be that men did most or all the pursuing (with women doing some subtle 'hinting', of course!) and women selected.

But with a change in rule-book and different dynamics at play from my grandma's hey-day, women are being required more and more in today's SMP to do some active and sometimes amazingly aggressive pursuing of their own, at the beginning of a relationship.
Often with disastrous results.

But this is off-topic. I shan't dwell on this for now.

How does one say politely, 'Thanks, but no thanks!'?

Does it depend on your own gender?
Does it depend on the gender of the person you are rejecting?
Does it depend on the timing of the relationship?
Does it depend on the reason for the rejection?
Does it depend on your own life circumstances?
Does it depend on how you perceive the other person, in general?

I suspect the answer to all of the above questions is a resounding 'yes'.

But to what degree in each case?

I always think that consideration for the other person is key, whatever the motive or the outcome of the rejection.
But this is often hard to achieve, given that a rejection is often painful, stuffed full of emotion, and unpleasant for all concerned.

Often, it is indeed the rejector who feels worse than the rejected. Even if it may look like it's the other way round.

Is there such a thing as a mutual rejection?
Or is this the preserve of Hollywood couples parting ways, in an attempt to pull one over the rest of us?
Is there such a thing as a 'nice' rejection?
Or is this a face-saving device invented by the rejected?


Some people are far too brusque in their 'rejection technique'.
Others are far too 'gentle' and ineffective, thereby needlessly prolonging the agony.
Others use one standard method for everybody, regardless of the situation.
Others use a 'variation on a theme' strategy.
Some people have never rejected someone.
Some people are lifelong rejectors.
Some people never recover from a rejection that happened in 1976.
Others are expecting to be rejected and come prepared.
Some people love the challenge of rejection and seek to breakdown the 'resistance'.
Others run a mile from impending rejection because they know they can't take the pain.


Incidentally, this scene from 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' also provides a good example of a well-executed rejection. Except it wasn't really a rejection in this case. All that smiling and coy behaviour is the clue :-)
So whilst I wouldn't recommend this for Caelaeno who was asking about 'serious' rejections, it is worth comparing this with Elisabeth Laurier's rejection of Mr. Taylor.
The first 30 seconds...





Now for my thoughts on the specific cases of rejection from 'Firelight'.

I should let drop now that my thoughts on these two cases are not restricted to the scenes of rejection alone.
Far from it!
Because I feel the context around these two rejections are indeed relevant, as you will see below:

Beginning with Elisabeth and Mr. Taylor...(hahaha, why does this make me laugh? She could have ended up as 'Elisabeth Taylor' had she not rejected him :-)

It has to be said that Mr. Taylor was near-perfection as far as a worthy man was concerned. A hard worker, handsome, good character, great sense of humour (he was, for example not at all phased by the antics of Lord Clare, Charles' father) and had an eye for spotting worthy women.
Elisabeth is not just beautiful, she is also graceful. She moves like a dancer.

And yet, by the time he got to ask Elisabeth for her hand in marriage, he had already lost her.
For she was emotionally unavailable to him.

Unfortunately for Mr. Taylor, Charles had got there first.
Eight whole years before him.

Elisabeth fell in love with Charles before they left the island hotel where she conceived Louisa.
Not because she had sex with him, I don't think.
In fact, I personally think she had fallen in love with him (of sorts) long before she actually saw him.
When she first heard his voice.
But this is arguable and I shan't dwell on it.

When she gives up her baby and pines for her for 7 years, we (as the audience of the film) are not made aware that she is also pining for the man with whom she had conceived her baby, until the very last scene where she admits to this...

Elisabeth appears very much to be a 'cold fish'. But this is just the usual façade of introverts. She wasn't really 'cold' at all. And in fact she actually says she is not like this: When Charles asks her how she can remain so calm at one point, she truthfully replies that she is not calm.

Elisabeth reminds me of a duck on a pond.
On the surface it appears all serene, but underneath, no-one is seeing its feet paddling furiously away.
I might even venture as far as to apply Myers-Briggs to Elisabeth.
I can unequivocally say she is INT...
Can't make up my mind whether she is a P or a J. Can any experts on Myers-Briggs help me out here?

Her background is also crucial and highly relevant. Elisabeth is a true loner. She appears to be an only child.
Motherless and with a father in prison, she is factually and effectively alone in the world.
It is therefore not surprising  to me that her one idea to raise money for her father's debts involves creating another human being, even if the plan is to give up said human being at birth.
In executing this plan, Elisabeth at least had company for nine months. For nine whole months in her lonely life, she had someone else to talk to, to relate with, to connect to.
Even if that peson was invisible and couldn't exactly participate in any conversation except to kick at frequent intervals :-)
In a fit of frustration during one of Louisa's tantrums, Elisabeth lets slip her own fears about her loneliness and her wish to prevent this life for Louisa when she grew up to become a woman.


Elisabeth's mistake when she was 22 was to believe that it would be easy to disengage from the emotional aspects of sex and motherhood.
Clearly, no-one had told her about a certain badass hormone called 'oxytocin' :-)
For a very mature woman, this is a somewhat surprising 'gap' in her level of insight.
But of course, Elisabeth soon learns...

Am I being unfair?
Elisabeth was motherless. Her father was unavailable. Detained at Her Majesty's pleasure, as we would say in Britain.
She would have had to 'raise' herself in many ways.
I say she did a pretty good job.
But there would have had to be a 'gap' somewhere.
Otherwise she wouldn't be human :-)


She fell in love with Charles because he was special, to her. Deep down, she could have terminated their encounters at any point, and she knew that. But she didn't. Because she had fallen for him.

When at the beach he asked her if she had enjoyed their encounter the previous night and she replied 'no', she quickly added that 'she could'. By this, I don't think Elisabeth was saying that she could force her body to respond to Charles. She was simply saying she knew it wouldn't be hard to enjoy any further encounters with Charles, because he was already someone she had begun to care about.
The 'no' was also perhaps just a normal woman's attempt to avoid giving the impression of 'sluttiness' especially in this situation where Elizabeth would probably have felt 'guilty' to have enjoyed her counter with Charles - it was afterall not supposed to be 'pleasure' - it was 'strictly business'.

And of course, when she says during their second encounter, 'I don't want to know your name, I don't want to know anything about you', you just know she really means, 'I do want to know your name, I want to know everything about you!'

Elisabeth's 'pattern' is that when she is feeling 'passionate' she wants to shout :-)
Interesting.
See? Not at all a 'cold fish' at all :-)

Something else which may not be apparent to everyone watching this film:
A little geography lesson of sorts.
Elisabeth was Swiss.
Switzerland is a small country with no access to the sea.
Sure, it has plenty of lakes - part of its charm.
But at each lake, you can see the bordering town or country: at Lake Léman you can see France. At Lake Konstanz you can see Germany. At Lake Maggiore you can see Italy.

The sea would have had a profound effect on Elisabeth.
The fact that you could see nothing beyond its farthest horizons would have been especially appealing to her as a Swiss woman.
To 'shout' where there is 'nothing' would have been truly liberating for her.
Another time she felt the need to 'shout', she went to the lake-house at Charles' home to do it.
This was the nearest thing she had to the sea.


Charles, on the other hand, I don't think was in love with Elisabeth per se when he left her on the boat.
Sure, he liked her an' all...but remember, at initial encounter, to a man, all women are the same.

Charles didn't fall in love with Elisabeth until 8 years later when she showed up at his house as the new governess to his daughter.
And even so, it wasn't until after Mr. Taylor had been rejected by Elisabeth that he got thinking about her...
But I dare say, there was the beginning of something even at their first encounter...
When he questions her about this rejection and presumes it is for Louisa's sake, does anyone really believe her (affirmative) answer?
I for one don't.
Didn't think you did either :-)
She was heavily under Charles' spell by this stage. Louisa was just an innocent bystander in this regard :-)


But when he did fall in love with her, the 'alpha-beta' chain was set in motion.

What do I mean?
The Tango dance. Alpha, beta, alpha, beta, in that order...
Incidentally from 00:30 to 02:20 in the above video is a brilliant display of Tango skills...
A woman falls in love with a man when he is at the 'alpha' stage. Confident/maybe a bit aloof/definitely dominant to her. Charles was all of these at their initial encounter - albeit not a 'normal' encounter by any means.

The man falls in love with the woman when he is at the 'beta' stage - a stage in which he pedestalises her a bit, and gets all vulnerable.
For Charles, this happened when he mentioned about 'firelight' the night after Mr. Taylor left for America.
From then on, everyone knew he was in love.
Certainly Molly, the girlfriend of his father noticed this.
And the rest as they say is history.
He did most of the 'chasing' in this story. But note that Elisabeth did it once too: at a time when it counted.

With the above in mind, what did Connie do wrong, then?

Connie's mistake was to be there for a man who had never gone 'beta' on her. For ten whole years, she had loved Charles. That's like a huge chunk of her childbearing years.
She was perhaps 5-10 years older than Elisabeth, so if Elisabeth was 22 when she met Charles and 23 when she had Louisa, and therefore 30 when she turned up again when Louisa was 7, that would make Connie about 35-40.
The way she talked incessantly about loving her sister Amy also suggests that she is Amy's older sister. Elder siblings talk like this and are all protective of their younger siblings and never the other way round.

 Connie and Elisabeth are both 'nice girls'.
But there is a subtle difference between them. One that Mr. Taylor spotted when he remarked (about Elisabeth): 'She's got pride in herself, doesn't back down'.


This is Connie:
Nice, nice, nice, kind, nice, nice, nice, smile, nice, nice, nice, compassionate, nice, nice, nice, smile, nice, Nice, NICE!!!

This is Elisabeth:
Nice, nice, nice, PASSION, nice, nice, nice, FIRE IN THE BELLY, nice, nice, nice, DESIRE, nice, nice, nice, PRIDE, nice, nice, nice.

See the difference?

Connie was too 'stiff upper lip British'.
Her passion, if she had any, was too deeply buried within her.
I strongly believe that she had every chance at her disposal to 'get' Charles before Elisabeth showed up.
Like ten whole years. She was frustratingly passive! Like Blanche Maxwell, this woman threw away an awful lot of opportunities. Not to say she should have been direct. But there is a way to be active while still being indirect...
She is effectively the proverbial passenger who lived by the seaport and still managed to miss the boat everyday for ten years.

Moreover, Connie was one of those women who needed 'competition' to get her own juices going. She needed the 'preselection' that Elisabeth provided.
Her last ditch attempt to show some passion for Charles by kissing his hand after he euthanases Amy (and by this stage it is clear to Connie that Charles loves Elisabeth) is not only somewhat pathetic, it is also way too late.

Connie is an example of what I described here.
A woman does not have to sleep with a man to be hooked on him.

Connie never got this far with Charles. Not to say she didn't hope for this.
But I imagine for her, there wouldn't be another man.
Charles had ruined her for other men.
She had wasted her whole life on a man who had never felt the same way about her.
A true tragedy.
On the other hand, I can also see the alternative point of view: that Connie was a sweet, kind woman who did everything right and still lost out. This is of course a very valid view.


Mr. Taylor, on the other hand would not have had this problem. For a start, for a man, 'there is always another woman' even when he has previously fallen in love with a woman.
As he correctly said to Elisabeth, 'one of these days, I might be doing this (proposing to a woman) again'.
I have no doubt that even on the ship en route to America, he would have found another woman to propose to.
The thing about 1838 is that, there were plenty more women like Elisabeth (i.e. marriageable women) around. The biggest complaint amongst men circa 2012 is that whilst there are millions of 'bangable' women out there, very few are marriageable.
I don't really know if this complaint is valid. But I shan't dwell on this.


Elisabeth's manner of rejecting Mr. Taylor is in my view, exemplary. Caelaeno, here's your answer.
She declines politely (actually, she doesn't decline - she acknowledges his compliment of her, and allows him to correctly deduce her refusal. After which she expresses regret. How classy is this!) And then she leaves.
She doesn't stay to commiserate with him.
A lot of women may feel it right to do this commiseration thing. Having previously done this myself, I now know it is wrong. Because to do this is to feel sorry for him in a way that wounds his masculinity.

Mr. Taylor begins what could be described as a self-depreciating speech when he starts to talk about a man getting his hopes up too high...but her icy stare soon sets him straight.
She helps him along by declaring that 'he is not too disappointed' (with her refusal of his proposal, that is).
I think this is very clever of her. She sets the 'frame' that he is to follow. Without making it too obvious, and certainly without taking anything away from his sense of masculinity.
And when he shows his vulnerability by asking if there was something he could 'fix' about himself before approaching another woman, she is both truthful and kind when she replies that any woman would be fortunate to be courted by him.
Sadly for Taylor, any woman but Elisabeth Laurier.

Elisabeth rejects Mr. Taylor: 6:08 to 7:50.

Connie's rejection was much more cringeworthy and brutal, although I don't see how gentler Charles could have made it.
Given that he had been effectively giving her this message for ten years...
Connie's problem was that she hadn't just been rejected on that fateful day.
She had never even been noticed by him in a romantic way. Ever.
She had been LJBF'ed for ten years.
But because her 'favours' had been gratefully accepted (none of these sexual, so there is a silver lining somewhat for Connie), she thought she was in a 'relationship'.

One persistent thought I had throughout my viewing of this film was...if Charles was so in need of a surrogate for his heir, why not Connie? He preferred to pay a strange woman a small fortune when Connie was available and would have most likely been willing.
Yes, the logistics would have been complicated, but it wouldn't have been difficult to arrange for her to 'disappear' for a while only to turn up with a baby (with an 'unknown' father)...and which Charles could have 'adopted'...
But no. Charles wasn't even up for this option.
Connie was just not in the frame at all...poor girl.

Charles rejects Connie: beginning to 1:37.
The extra painful part for Connie in her rejection scene is when Charles says to her, 'You know how much I loved her, don't you?' (referring to his dead wife, her sister). Not the best time for Connie to hear this.


Every woman needs to be a doctor of sorts.
For she needs to correctly diagnose when she loves a man, and when he loves her.

And she should know that a completely 'lukewarm' man is the male equivalent of a 'reluctant bride'.
There has to be something from him. (Not to say he ought to get his way of course :-)
In this regard, even an attempt to hold hands counts as something. But a clearer sign is better.
That's my 'suggestion' for the day.



I could go on all day. Um, in fact, I have!
Why don't we discuss?

Any interesting stories out there?
For Caelaeno?
For me?
For all of us to learn from?

Thank you kindly :-)